


he's alive! i'm alive! we're all alive! (oh, this case just got busted wide open)

by rustykitchenscissors



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bad Puns, Banter, Bickering, Boundaries, Cell Phones, Company-Mandated Psych Eval, Established Relationship, Hashtag Jokes, IHOP, Indoor Gardening, Insomnia, Invasion of Privacy, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Obsessive Behavior, Panic Attacks, Paparazzi, Planned Parenthood, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Self-Hatred, Sex Difficulties, Smoking as a metaphor for sex, Sparring, Steve Rogers' depressing choices of reading material, The secret life of Bucky Barnes, Unconventional Solutions to Sex Difficulties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 22:12:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6584629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustykitchenscissors/pseuds/rustykitchenscissors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“No addiction. No catastrophe. And no philosophy, for fuck’s sake. You ever read anything in your life that wasn’t a downer?”</p><p>Steve splays the book facedown across his thigh and rubs a bit of Bucky’s hair between forefinger and thumb. “What would be the fun in that?”</p><p>OR: Steve is deeply depressed; Bucky comes back; Steve continues to be deeply depressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he's alive! i'm alive! we're all alive! (oh, this case just got busted wide open)

**Author's Note:**

> (elaboration on graphic violence warning in end notes)

Everyone expects him to want the middle stages. Before they give him a cell phone, they give him a curly-corded landline. Clint says, “But it’s got buttons instead of the spinning thingamajig.” He presses ten buttons and hands Steve the handset. No one’s told him about how there are ten numbers now, but it makes sense. Aliens. Good asthma medicine. Ten numbers before you can hear a voice.

“Rogers,” he says when a woman clears her throat on the other line.

“Red scare,” says Romanoff.

He doesn’t say,  _ No, that’s me _ , because it isn’t anymore. He says, “Clint—” and she says, “I know. I sent him over.” The silence slackens between them.

Awkward now, Steve says, “Well,” and hands the phone back to Clint with raised eyebrows.

Clint laughs at something Romanoff says. He looks at Steve. He’s maybe laughing at Steve. That wouldn’t be so bad; Steve would be more of a person if Clint laughed at him. Clint spirals the cord around his splinted pointer finger. This time, he laughs while smiling down at the floor.

Slick, shiny hardwood. Steve looks down at his own white running shoes and practices a smile that feels sticky on his face. They tried to ease him in with the fake hospital room and the woman with the loose curls. What happened? He felt, for the first time in decades, like a small, bloodied animal curled up in his own big chest. He broke the wall.

Clint hangs up the phone and Steve says, “Thanks for this, Hawkeye,” and holds out his hand to shake. After a second, he switches hands so Clint can shake with the uninjured one. Instead, Clint curls Steve’s fingers inward for him and knocks their fists together.

“Natasha asked if you wouldn’t rather she send you telegrams.”

Steve rolls his eyes and withdraws his hand too slowly. He says, “Can I get you—” and then remembers he doesn’t have coffee anywhere. He clears his throat. “Sorry, never mind. Really, thanks.”

 

 

The next day, he rides his new motorcycle downtown and walks around until he sees a store full of the kinds of phones the other Avengers use. They’re all so thin he thinks they’ll break the moment he picks them up.

Like how Bucky said for a while after, “I bet you met your old self like this, you’d break all his bones just going for a handshake, huh?” Only when drunk, of course. That mix of bitter and wonderstruck, hair scrambled across his forehead. “I bet you’ll snap me in half without thinking one of these days.” And Steve would throw an arm across his shoulders and pull him in tight to make sure he knew,  _ Look, fuck that. I swear to God you’re steel to your core.   _

But.

He gets the warranty, and something called screen glass, and a clunky black rubber case. The saleswoman tries to give it all to him for free. He rubs at one eye with the heel of his hand before he makes himself grin at her and call her ma’am and take out the credit card SHIELD issued him first thing.

They probably would have issued him a box of cash if they didn’t think holding solid proof of inflation would make him keel over. As though he isn’t already intimate with how history takes everything and blows it all up. Makes it too big to hold in its entirety.

He likes the phone once he’s sheepishly asked the saleswoman to get it started for him and show him how it works. It isn’t anything like a phone at all. D.C. isn’t anything like Brooklyn. His jaw isn’t anything like the jaw Bucky pressed a desperate kiss to before leaving for Basic. When he reads about Keurigs on the internet on his new phone, he goes out and buys one of those instead of a percolator. The little cups aren’t anything like coffee grounds. It’s all easier like this.

 

 

Tony calls him on the cell phone while he’s sitting by the Potomac. It’s three in the morning. Steve woke up two hours ago and walked here and sat down and said aloud, “You know how to damn well breathe, Rogers.” The river said back—

“Jesus, Cap, you know I would have given you a Stark Phone if you just  _ asked.  _ What happened to baseball, apple pie, and being a gentleman? Please and thank you? I mean, a fucking Microsoft Phone? Now that’s just sad. I’m crying, hand to God. Oh, I’m sorry, was that blasphemous? Ten Hail Marys and an act of self-flagellation, right?”

He doesn’t ask how Tony got his number. He doesn’t ask how Tony knew he was awake. The Cloud? He looks up. Black. The blinking light of an airplane. Black. He closes his eyes again. He can feel his pulse fluttering in his lids.

“Cap? Look, not that I’m not happy talking to a machine all day—”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m here, no. What is it?”

“A Microsoft Phone?”

“Tony, I don’t know what that  _ means _ .”

“It means that one of my interns will be there in the morning. Jesus.” The phone beeps so he can know he got hung up on.  

An intern is there in the morning. There as in by the Potomac, where Steve’s still half-drowsing, but with every muscle in his back tensed tight. Her black hair is cut close to the scalp and her denim shirt is so long it’s almost a dress. He thinks,  _ My age? _ Then he thinks,  _ That isn’t my age. That  _ was _ my age.  _ And then he thinks,  _ Very young,  _ and tilts his head to the side.

She says, “Captain Rogers? Mr. Stark sent me.” Her voice has had all the accent scrubbed out of it. It’s like his stage voice. His now voice. She takes a small box out of her handbag and drops it in his palm. She walks away. He tries to yell his thanks after her but his voice gets too small between throat and world. The river says back—

Someone’s scrawled, “Congrats, this phone isn’t garbage,” on the top of the plain brown cardboard. Tony’s scrawled. Steve can’t remember Howard’s handwriting. He knows Tony’s voice is only the same if you aren’t listening. He throws the box in the river, not as far as he knows he can. The plunk is like one heartbeat.

He wants to feel bad about it. He used to hate littering. It isn’t that there’s more trash now, or that he’s rebelling against there being campaigns against it now; it’s just all the trash has got nothing to do with him. 

 

 

After his first SHIELD mission with Natasha, she takes him to get frozen yogurt. A moment ago, it was nighttime and his tongue had someone else’s blood on it. Now, in a different time zone, the sun is still real and he can only taste the orange mints Natasha threw in his mouth on the jet after saying, “Hey, think fast.”

He tried to beg off to go home and sleep, but she told him he wasn’t that old and handed him a pair of oversized silver aviators. He didn’t put them on. They hang loosely in his left hand now.

“So you pull the lever and it comes oozing out and at the end they charge you by weight. The yogurt’s weight. Not yours.” He’s staring at the bottom of the paper cup she handed him. “Clint made that joke when he brought me here for the first time. It isn’t very funny. Do you think I should get Birthday Cake or Pumpkin Cheesecake?”

He stops staring into the cup. She’s watching him like he’s a rare bird. Under her thick knit hat, her red hair is full of sweat and gunpowder.

“Pumpkin Cheesecake. I’m the one with a hundred birthdays to catch up on.”

“Oh, it’s only a hundred? Damn. I’m going to have to return some cards.” She smiles wide and lopsided. It probably isn’t her real smile.

His mom used to make him pineapple upside-down cake for his birthdays. She’d only cut herself a sliver and save the rest for him and Bucky. His first birthday after she passed, Bucky sprung for them to spend all day at the movies. Bucky sobbed, and pretended not to, but Steve can’t remember what he was sobbing about; he couldn’t really hear the movie over the electric fans anyway. Nothing but the air stirring and Bucky talking nonstop in his good ear.  

Bucky said once that Leslie Howard had a face worth crying over. It was something about his chin.

They sit in the back of the shop. Natasha tells him the music playing on the intercom is called electronic. His yogurt is too sweet, but he eats it all. He starts tasting blood again.

 

 

They won’t let him run missions for SHIELD full-time unless he submits to a psych evaluation.

Natasha says, “Eyes on your own test, Rogers.”

Tony, without having been asked his advice, says, “Don’t worry; I’m working on a benzo intense enough for even your metabolism, but I’m gonna need your participation soon. Just scientific inquiry. No funny stuff.” 

Clint says, “Okay, so when they ask you if you want to die, you gotta tell them not unless it’s for your country.”

 

 

Instead of scheduling the appointment, he rides his motorcycle around the city for an hour. His heart doesn’t stop being louder than the engine. He parks, gets off, and starts walking, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders by his ears.

A green-haired man strides straight at him and says, “Smile.” Before Steve could smile even if he wanted to, the man takes a photo with his phone. They both keep walking.  This happens most days.

Sometimes he goes grocery shopping and there’s a news magazine at the register with a picture of him frowning on the cover.  Sometimes the pictures are only on the inside pages and Natasha cuts them out and slips them under his apartment door with the names of movies he should watch to cheer up.  _ Cheer up.  _ That’s what she writes.

Last time, it was a bunch of movies all called  _ The Bourne— _ . He stopped watching the first one halfway through. He didn’t turn it off. It was nice to have the company. But he stopped watching.

He doesn’t get the whole thing of watching movies on a computer anyway.

Up the street, a man and two women in matching bright vests are standing outside a building with their arms folded across their chests. Another man is in the smaller woman’s face. Steve can’t hear what he’s saying but can see his clenched fists. He clenches his own fists and starts toward them not at a run but fast enough that people move out of his way. The guy sees him. He blanches. He runs. 

Steve slows down. He unclenches his fists. He realizes they’re still in his pockets.

When he’s in speaking distance, he asks the small woman, “Are you?”

She says, “Yeah? Wait, are you—”

The man steps in front of her and looks him up and down. “I don’t want to hear it, buddy.”

“Excuse me. I was talking to her.”

The man says to the woman, “This fucking throwback,” and shoos Steve along with his hands. Steve raises his chin. He takes his hands out of his pockets. The Bucky in his head asks him if he’s ever heard of taking a deep breath.  _ You aren’t  _ always  _ having an asthma attack, Steve.  _

He says, “Fine,” reads the sign above the door of the building, and leaves.

 

 

They've both got faces and fingernails smeared with ash and A.I.M. viscera (How this works: Steve doesn’t need to be sane if it’s an emergency. Isn’t everything an emergency these days?). Natasha takes him to a playground. Her legs swoop in and out gracefully as she swings. He once walked in on her in an empty SHIELD corridor, raised up en pointe, arms above her head. Eyes closed. Breathing.

_ Bucky could _ , he thought then. Bucky swinging a girl in a blue dress above his head. Her gentle landing.

It's past midnight. The moon is absent. In her grave. Before she rises again. Natasha says, "You know, in New York now, they close the parks at dusk."

"Does that stop you?"

Her mouth twitches. Eyes close. Toes in the roll-up ballet slippers she pulled from her purse point. "The rules aren't there to stop  _ me _ ."

Sleeping bodies in the park. Gray clothes, gray bodies, gray coughing. His own stomach eating itself. Bucky squeezing his shoulder, chewing his own lip. Steve would pray at night for everyone they passed, too ashamed to pray that he and his mom wouldn’t join them.

Everything in the playground is plastic. Bright, acidic colors. Like his old uniform. Like the Bucky Bears he's seen in shop windows. Coat like a sky where there's no war. No night. Heart-red at the buttons, collar, nose.

Steve's body is clumsy in the swing. This body had no childhood. He doesn't bend, unbend his legs like Natasha. He sways with his loafers dragging on the foam ground. If he pumps, he might fly, swing and all. This body.

He says to Natasha, "I was thinking I’d like to be a Planned Parenthood clinic escort.”

Natasha hmms. “I do that sometimes. You can’t.”

“Oh yeah? And why’s that?” His voice has lowered without his permission. It’s getting that gravel that comes before real gravel gets stuck in a bloody elbow, ankle, palm. He’s found it’s easy to get angry with her, and it’s easy not to feel as bad about that as he wants to. She likes it, he thinks. Watching other people unspool.  

“Because you don’t paint one target on top of another target and call it armor. No one on the street is trying to kill me.”

“I’ll wear the sunglasses.”

“Just take the psych eval, Steven. You’re Captain America. It’s only a formality.”  

There are three stars in the sky. "I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I'm not spectacular at talking."

"Only with your fists?"

He leans over and catches the chain of her swing as she passes by, trusting her to stay balanced despite the interrupted momentum. But she leaps off and lands in a crouch by the jungle gym. She tosses her hair over her shoulder. A fox’s tail slipping between the trees.

"Say you're happy. Say you’re well-adjusted. Say you have a hobby. Badda bing, badda boom." She says this last part in a perfect imitation of Clint.

“A hobby?”

“I always tell people to go with building birdhouses, but I think they’re starting to catch onto that one.”

He leaps off of his swing too. It isn’t impressive. He clenches his whole body at the last minute so he won’t go very far. 

 

 

He’s been awake for over a year before he decides he’s ready to read Peggy’s obituary. He searches her name on the internet. She doesn’t have an obituary.

 

 

Her hair is long and pale and carefully laid around her on the bed. Sleeping Beauty. But that’s him. Still asleep. When he called Tony to scream about not having been told she was alive, he asked into Tony’s stunned silence if  _ she  _ knew  _ he  _ was alive. Tony said, “She has a TV.” The least Steve had ever heard him say in one go.

After he hung up, he regretted the screaming. His not knowing wasn’t actually Tony’s fault. He was just Steve’s most recent received call, listed as Don’t Call Him Howard.

When Peggy turns to face him, it’s obvious Tony was right. She doesn’t look surprised. She does start to cry. He’s been crying since he stepped into the elevator. He feels stupid with it, all this pressure just beneath his face.

 

 

“My mother had a friend who would help out women in the neighborhood with that. But it was different then. It wasn’t talked about.” He’s leaned back in the little visitor’s chair, the empty plastic from his sandwich crumpled on his lap.

She says, “I do  _ know _ , Steve,” but she sounds soft. Fond.

“Right.” He ducks his head. “I’m so used to, uh. No one knows anything in the future. They all think they know everything.” He closes his eyes and then he opens them. She’s beautiful, eyes ever-bright. “So anyway, I was surprised that she told me, but I figured she thought I oughta know it was an option if I ever got a girl into trouble. I remember thinking,  _ She’s gotta know that’s never gonna happen. _ ”

Peggy laughs. It turns into a cough, and he hands her the water on the table by her bed.

“Now I think she did know. She just didn’t believe in lying to me. She never believed in lying to anyone.”

“Well, I guess the apple does fall far from the tree after all, doesn’t it?”

He says, “Hey,” but he sounds soft.

 

 

Every time he’d pictured the psych eval, it had been in an interrogation room. His hands had been chained to the table. Bright lights in his eyes. Dark shadows under his eyes. Sometimes he had a tooth loose from the psychiatrist banging his head against the table when he wouldn’t talk.

Instead, there’s a goddamn purple plush throw rug under his loafers.

He says, “Do we have to do this here?”

The sun is streaming into his eyes, but in a soft way that barely makes him squint at all. He doesn’t get to try and reach up and block it before remembering he’s restrained. No restraints. Loose ends. Big hands. 

Always big. Wrists big now too.

Dr. Dunphy is a woman in maybe her forties with a loose braid over her shoulder and earrings that sound like rain when she turns her head. She won’t stop  _ looking at him.  _ She asks, “Did you have somewhere else in mind?” and it’s hard for him not to laugh at her.

“Oh, well, I thought maybe we could catch a vaudeville show together. Share a Mary Pickford or two at this real swell speakeasy behind the penny candy store. Then?” He pulls his hands out of his pockets and flourishes them palms-up in front of him. “We’ll see where the night takes us.”

Dr. Dunphy gives the impression of shifting forward with interest without moving beyond a slow blink. “So you have a sense of humor about your situation.”

“My situation?”

“Your situation, Captain Rogers.”  

“If you’re asking whether I want to kill myself, I don’t.”

“Was that something you wanted me to ask?”

“Me? No. But in case you were wondering, I’m perfectly fine.” He smiles. “I swear on my life.”

“Okay. That’s good to hear.”

His phone makes a bright, bubbly noise from in his pocket. A second. A third. He says, “I’m so sorry,” and takes it out and fumbles it to silent, seeing that Natasha’s been texting him. The last message just says, “action? ;)” and he snorts in spite of himself before sliding the phone away again.   

Dr. Dunphy says, “So you’ve been making connections? Reaching out to people?”

He says, “I build birdhouses. I reach out to birds.”

A row of mugs smiles up at him from her glass coffee table. In the corner: electric kettle, box of tea bags. The mugs all have cute wild animals painted on them. Has anyone ever tried to smash the glass coffee table to shards? Would he?

Dr. Dunphy says, “Birdhouses?”

Steve says, “I’m not bad.”

 

 

It turns out he is invisible in the silver aviators. He feels silly wearing them into the coffee house instead of folding them away, but he also felt silly leaving his apartment to go to a coffee house when the Keurig was right there. That’s how the future is. Worse than being a dancing monkey. Smaller slights against his dignity, piling up.

The barista’s got his shield tattooed on the underside of her forearm. He can’t help it. He says, “Nice ink.”  _ Nice ink.  _ Reaching out.

Averting her eyes, she says, “Oh, well, I got it before he came back. My pop-pop loved the old films.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen a few of those.”

“Well, the acting was cheesy, but.” She shrugs. “Sentiment, y’know.”

“Oh, I know.” He takes out a crumpled ten and puts it in the tip jar prematurely. Her nametag says  _ Jadey.  _ She’s gotta be a kid still. Whatever that means anymore. “How’s the, uh. Pumpkin spice?”

The pumpkin spice tastes like vomiting his guts out. He likes it. He sips it by the window, aviators still on.  _ The Body in Pain  _ lies open on the table in front of him, cover getting sticky with whatever the last customer spilled, his elbow marking his page. He found the book in his mailbox a few days ago, wrapped in brown paper with a hammer and sickle sketched in the corner. He texted Natasha, “Thanks,” before he had it open.

She texted back, “it’s depressing. just your thing.” Then a little picture of a poodle.

_ If from that wound he dies, his whole body is deeply affected, radically altered; his whole body is now the wound. _

Reread. Pause. Reread. Sip the disgusting coffee.

Across the street, a clinic escort holds a woman’s hand as she walks her into the Planned Parenthood. No protesters right now. Just that electricity-in-the-air feeling when you know you’re always in danger. So the always feeling. Even from before. His whole life, the electricity-in-the-air feeling. His whole life, the fine hair on the back of his neck standing up in anticipation.

For three hours, he alternates between watching the Planned Parenthood and reading about the wound, the death, the body, the alteration. The body. The wound. The forever. His pumpkin spice latte gets cold. He sips it anyway. Jadey’s shift ends and he waves at her on her way out. She shrugs. Sunset blooms in the distant sky. The wound. None of the women get bothered on their way in. He wishes he didn’t mind. He hates when it’s wrong to mind.  

  
  
  


In August, he kills a man he was told to take prisoner. His name is Henrik. Dead-on heart shot with a knife. Through Henrik’s breast bone. Out through Henrik’s spine. Snow-capped mountain. Face numb from wind. A.I.M. scientists raising young girls in a cave. 

Henrik was about to get the drop on Natasha. Steve didn't  think. That was why. Steve didn't think. He didn't have a prickling feeling behind his eyes when he imagined Henrik in SHIELD’s hands. He didn’t think at all. It was self-defense, instinct, the coming smell of blood in the air.

Natasha catches the knife as it exits Henrik’s body. Blood scents the air and stains her hands.

Rumlow says, “Widow can handle herself. Been doing it long before either of us came along.”

Natasha says, “Now that’s no way to treat your weapons. Look, you’ve dulled the blade.”

Fury says, “Good job. We’ve got no intel and no leverage.”

Dr. Dunphy says, “I don’t think your birdhouses are providing enough of an outlet, Captain Rogers.”

One of the young girls says in German, “But now?”

He tells Dr. Dunphy he’ll take up swimming. Accent blurry with disuse, he tells the young girl, “Now you live.”

For something to hide his mouth, he drinks tea from Dr. Dunphy’s zebra mug. Lemon zinger. When it steeps: blood in the water. Years since German. Years since he swam. Years since a snowcapped mountain. But now.

  
  
  


-

  
  
  


Bucky says he wants to grow something, so Steve looks up how they grow things in the future. He reads about aquaponic vegetable gardens on his phone in the dark, leaned up against the headboard. Bucky sleeps next to him. His forehead presses into his metal forearm so the skin will be imprinted with ridges when he gets up. His breath is so slow it’s almost nothing. His inhalations whistle.

The doctors they’d met with in secret--Steve was mildly disappointed that the world didn’t turn to harsh blacks and whites, that no coded messages passed hands, that even a hush-hush rendezvous felt sterile--all said it might be a long time before Bucky remembered how to sleep. That made sense to Steve; after Azzano, Bucky was always volunteering to take the other guys’ turns at watch. His face was more shadow than not. But this time around, Bucky can’t remember how to stay awake. Steve knows not to be jealous. He runs a tentative hand over the back of Bucky’s skull. The hair there is close-cut now, so Steve can feel clearly the rounded plane of bone. How it’s solid.

This is Bucky’s room, technically; the shelves are crammed with Bucky’s books and stacks of paper Steve doesn’t ask about, unworn black clothes and cigarette butts strewn across the floor, but they both flit in and out of the rooms, in and out of each other’s beds. At first, sometimes, Steve would walk around the apartment looking for Bucky with increasing worry when he didn’t respond to his name, checking under the table and in the bathtub and in Bucky’s bed and Bucky’s closet before thinking to look in his own room. There Bucky would be, sprawled across Steve’s bed with his boots paused cringingly mid-yank, his heels somewhere in the shafts from him trying to remove them without undoing the laces.  

Those first few times, Steve left him to it. Finally, he lingered too long looking, and Bucky caught him with one open eye—a talent Steve had always envied, as he always accidentally squeezed both his own eyes shut like a sleepy cat when he tried to wink—and said, “Can you take my boots off,” and then, when his boots were off, “No need to skulk you know,” and then, “Okay, so, see,” and he took Steve’s hand and pulled him onto the bed.

Steve said, “It’s five in the evening,” and Bucky said, “Shush, Steve. I’m sleeping,” and rearranged Steve so his left hand rested between Bucky’s shoulder blades, right hand free for thumbing through the news on his phone without taking it in. He could feel Bucky’s heart in his back, he thought. It was a whisper, but it was there.

Now, it’s a free-for-all. Sometimes they switch beds. Sometimes Bucky  _ is  _ conked out in the tub.

In the morning, with Bucky still sleeping like the—but no. Heart: there. In the morning, Steve goes out and buys an aquarium, catfish, things for growing lettuce, and an assortment of glass and plastic odds and ends that the internet told him Bucky would need. It isn’t too hard to set up. He’s studied a lot of diagrams in the past few hours. The catfish look like guns made soft.

 

 

Every time he and Sam get together at IHOP, which has been a lot of times in the recent past, Steve orders a few stacks of pancakes to go. Plain; Bucky's tried all the stuffed kinds, the pancakes coated in fruits and creams and compotes, but he said every time, "Where the hell's the pancake in this circus?"

It feels traitorous to get himself breakfast food without Bucky there, so Steve always orders the t-bone. No matter how many times he does it, Sam raises his eyebrows and shakes his head at him.

"I swear, man," he says after the waitress has flipped her pad closed and stalked off, "you sure you wouldn't rather order a chew toy? Maybe a plastic bag to gnaw on?"

"What? It's meat. It's fresh, it's cooked, and I like it."

Sam busies himself pouring half-and-half in his coffee and nesting the empty cups inside each other. "All right. It's your food poisoning."

"I can't get food poisoning. I'm invulnerable, remember?"

"Tell that to the black eye you were sporting last time I saw you." That had been over a month ago, and Steve had been fresh from sparring with Natasha. He hadn't slept for the previous three nights, and when he threw his weight at her, he misjudged and smacked his face right into the top of her skull.

It gave her a concussion. She made fun of him for it, wheedling favors from him to make up for her  _ grievous, regrettable injury _ , until he guesses his guilt showed too starkly on his face, and she dropped her sullen, hurt look like it was on fire and told him, “You don’t get to beat yourself up. My skull already did that for you,” and smiled, and jerked her chin at his shiner.

When Steve showed up to lunch looking like that, late, out of breath, and full of apology, Sam, having already ordered Steve’s usual, asked the waiter for a second, raw t-bone to heal Steve’s eye up, and Steve added as the man was turning to the next table, "No, that’s—If you do that. Only if that's something you normally do."

Steve got the steak. He kept it off his face.

He leans back in the booth with his arms crossed protectively across his chest and looks to his left, at a family of five eating waffles, pretending he can't see Sam grinning at him in his peripheral. "That was gone by my second cup of coffee."

"Yeah, okay, but short-lived poisoning's still poisoning."

A little kid's got one waffle held between her hands like a book. Syrup oozes into her lap as she watches it. Steve turns back to Sam and tries to will his face calm and open. Calm and open is what Sam usually gives, and it's what he should get in return.

"You look like you just swallowed roach repellent," Sam tells him, and Steve steals Sam's nested half-and-halfs and crumples them in his hand.

"You know, we could try meeting somewhere other than an IHOP next time I'm in town."

Steve shrugs. "IHOP's fine. Bucky likes the pancakes."

"Well,  _ Sam _ likes the IFC Center’s Queer/Art/Film series, and I'm pretty sure Steve Rogers does too."

"You're saying I'm an asshole for planning our time together around getting Bucky pancakes."

"That's not what I said." Sam takes a pen out of his jacket pocket and scribbles a bit on his napkin. Swirls and stars. Neither of them talks. Swirls and stars. Sam looks up and crinkles his eyes. "That's a little bit what I said."

"I'm sorry."

"It's cool. But next time? The IFC Center. I mean it."

"You finally asking me on a second date? ‘Cause I could’ve sworn I’d scared you off after the first one ended with internal bleeding and a global Nazi conspiracy. Bad wooing technique."

"Uhh, taking down Hydra  _ was  _ the second date. Our third date was at a cemetery. Our fourth date was that county fair in Oklahoma where there'd been reported sightings of a carnie with a silver arm and some seriously questionable hygiene. Fifth--"

"Okay, I get it."

"You know, I'm worried about you, Steve. I know you used to know how to count."

But it's all been one long week since he woke up in 2012. The ice: one fitful sleep.

“So, what, we been going steady? Did I miss an anniversary? Do I need make it up to you?” He looks up at Sam through his eyelashes and flutters them.

“I think. You’ve got enough of a complex relationship on your hands without adding me into the mix.”

Steve nods, schooling his face into sad resignation. “You mean Nick Fury.”

It feels good to make Sam cackle, even if he knows exactly what Sam means. But he’s barely kissed Bucky since a blizzard in the Eifel. A patch of trees like bronchioles. Snow slipping between their mouths to turn only to wetness. Bucky saying, “I know. That. Peggy,” and Steve catching Bucky’s tongue between his teeth to cut him off.

He hasn’t kissed Sam at all since before climbing onto his motorcycle and riding home to find a record already playing in his apartment.

Not cackling anymore but still with the good kind of tension in his jaw, the kind that means something beautiful’s trying to grow there, Sam says, “I don’t need you thinking you need to buy me pancakes all the time too.”

Steve would never. He knows Sam’s a Belgian waffle man through and through. Eggs over easy. Sausage. Oatmeal instead of hash browns even though that costs extra.

"Don't stress about me stressing. Aren’t I supposed to be the ornery daredevil here?” It feels strange coming out of his mouth. It was something Bucky had called him once in the war, the first time he saw Steve flip his motorcycle through the air. It was one of the gentler things Bucky had called him at the time. “Going to an early grave is my job."

"Seriously, I'm buying you a number line and taping it to your desk like you're in the damn second grade."

It hurts Steve’s ribs to make himself laugh, so he does it again. And one more time when Sam starts listing every year Steve’s been alive and trying to name a current event for each.

At some point, he skips ahead to, “1997: icebergs discovered on one of Jupiter’s moons,” and Steve finally finds it in himself to cut in with, “Yeah, okay, don’t hurt yourself,” and he puts his hand over Sam’s. The touch lingers but doesn’t last, is warm but not a close press. Gentleness. Something so rare it hurts.

He pulls back. “There’s a new used bookstore I’ve been meaning to check out. Or, you know, ‘new’ bookstore.” One thing to be grateful for: doing air quotes doesn’t make him self-conscious anymore. “There was this book Bucky used to read and reread that—shit. I mean. I also think you’d like it. The store, not the book. The book is garbage.” He squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, the world is still there. Still Sam. “Genuinely. If you’ve still got time after.”

Sam snorts and starts doodling on the napkin again. He pokes his tongue into his cheek. His gaze is soft on Steve. “Yeah. My meeting’s not for a few hours. Let’s do that.”

Walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam, his receipt still balled in his fist, slowing his stride just ostentatiously enough that it’s both to match with Sam and to piss him off, Steve knows that there’s more than one thing to be grateful for. There’s everything.  And his breath is a solid thing in his throat anyway. He’s always choking on it. Always ready to choke.

 

 

When he gets home, there’s broken glass everywhere and Bucky’s awake and standing there looking at the glass. His hair’s tufted up in several places. He’s wearing gray boxers and a big t-shirt with, “HAWKEYE,” across the front in purple Sharpie. Clint gave it to him when they moved in and said, “There’s more where that came from.” Now the shirt’s drenched with aquarium water and spotted with blood. The floor is a small flood.

“Jesus fucking, H., Buck. I mean what did you--?” Too accusatory? Too panicky? The shadows under Bucky’s eyes still haven’t gone away. Permanence.  _ Nice ink. _

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want it, so I broke it.” He looks up and his eyes are narrowed and distant, like he’s trying to work something out.

“You don’t even know what it is and you don’t want it? Who even said it was for you?”

His eyes clear. “Fuck, I know what it is. I read your browser history. I don’t want it.”

“Bucky, When did you read my browser history? That’s private. I. I could be looking up anything on there.”  _ What are yoga poses to calm me down? Who is Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando queer? Marlon Brando dick size. How to tell if the NSA is monitoring you? Gourmet donut shop how come. _

Bucky doesn’t even rib him about  _ Marlon Brando dick size.  _ Instead he says, “What, you think I’m afraid to get dirt on my hands now or something? Because I promise there’s been worse.”

Steve says, “What the fuck, Bucky, you know I’m not—” The water’s soaking into his shoes. He doesn’t back up.  

“Do you want a list?”

“That’s not what I—This stuff wasn’t some kind of  _ statement.  _ I just thought it would be neat. It’s something new.”

Bucky clenches the hem of his shirt in his metal fist. “A lot’s  _ new _ , Steve.”

Steve goes out and he comes back with a tomato plant in a terracotta pot. Bucky’s asleep on the couch and the floor’s dry and swept clean. A scrap of paper on the dinner table says,  _ That was fucked up of me.  _

 

 

The next time Bucky’s awake, it’s a little after five. Steve’s just poured himself Cheerios, and when he sees Bucky flop over and push himself up on his arms like a stretching cat, he reaches back into the cupboard. Bucky intercepts him, takes the box, grabs a bowl. “Martyr,” he mutters. Steve, shoeless, kicks him in the shin.

Steve’s mouth is a gluey mess of cereal and milk when he thinks to ask, “Hold on, what’d you do with the fish?” A bit of chewed Cheerio lands on the tablecloth.

Bucky squints at him. “Scooped ‘em out, put ‘em in Ziplocs of water, and I gave them to the little girl downstairs. She has a whole aquarium setup with miniature trees in there and everything.” He pauses and knocks his spoon purposefully against the side of his bowl. Clang. “I’m not an animal.”

Steve swallows. “You’re not.”

“I mean, I didn’t really act like I’m not an animal.”

Steve says, “You’d just woken up. You weren’t thinking.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I guess.” He looks at the tabletop. “We, uh. We do owe her ma money now, though. For the ceiling. There, uh. Water damage.”

“ _ You  _ owe her money. I was being helpful.”

“Right, well. Show me my steady employment and I’ll get right on it.”

This time Steve makes a point of shoving a spoonful in his mouth before he talks. “Nah, no one owes anyone anything. Clint’ll get someone in here to fix it. He’s rich for some reason.” He knows that was half-intelligible at most. That’s fine. Clint will pay whether Bucky heard him right or not.

Anyway, Bucky laughs at him. What matters. “You seen any  _ Peanuts _ cartoons?” Steve shakes his head.

“Well. Never mind then. I guess that was after your time.”

“ _ Our  _ time.”

Now Bucky’s the one to shake his head. “Nah. I’ve had a lot of time.” His eyelids start to droop again.

 

 

Natasha’s got this arrangement with the owner of a gym in Flatbush. And by, “arrangement with,” she means, “key she stole from.” She goes by herself a lot when it’s open, in synthetic yoga clothes and heavy makeup; she holds back; spy practice, she says, but Steve thinks she just likes to be a person. Either way, Steve can’t go with her then. He’ll blow her cover.

The gym’s been closed for hours, now, though. Instead of turning on the lights, Steve and Natasha set up a few flashlights around the boxing ring. “I’m not raising this guy’s electric bill,” Steve said the first time, when Natasha flipped the fluorescent overheads on.

“Her name’s Antoinette,” Natasha said.

“Then I’m not raising Antoinette’s electric bill.” And he turned off the lights and they fought in perfect dark. Since then, they’ve discovered it’s nice with the ring of glow added, the dramatic shadows that get thrown up their faces. He would love to paint Natasha like that. In motion, face made beautiful-monstrous.

After, they pant in a kind of syncopation, both sitting on the floor with their backs against the ring, sweat-drenched, just a little bit of blood on each of them from Natasha splitting his lip with her fist. She’s already pulled an airline bottle of vodka out from somewhere on her person and poured it on the matching splits in her knuckles to clean them. He’s waiting patiently for the smooth, sweet feeling of his skin knitting itself back up and watching her chug water with her head thrown back. 

“When you were with the Red Room.” He bites his tongue. He waits for Natasha to know the rest of his question. She tosses her water bottle at him. That’s all. He doesn’t drink from it. “I guess I’m just wondering what reason Bucky would have to know cartoons from after we died.”

“You think I’m an expert on Hydra’s motivations now?”

“I think you think you’re an expert on everyone’s motivations.”

“I think you think there’s normal and not normal. But the chocolate gets in the peanut butter and vice versa. That’s a reference to—”

“Natasha.”

“Life is life, Rogers. Yes, actually, they showed us cartoons in the Red Room. Yes, Bucky probably saw a lot that didn’t have anything to do with killing anyone. Or so you’d think.”

She stands and reaches down her small hand to haul him up.

Upright, he’s still holding hands with her. “What, everything’s got to do with killing, you mean?”

“You really haven’t figured that out?” Her teeth are always sharp and clean. He’s always taken aback by them. She raises their joined hands in the air and inclines her head, motioning for him to twirl. He has to bend his knees. He does. She laughs. Her body never had a childhood either. “What cartoon did he mention?”

“It was  _ Peanuts _ . He didn’t say why.”

“Oh, I know why.” She closes her mouth and runs her tongue over the top row of sharp teeth, momentarily jutting out her flesh.  

“What, it’s for you to know and me to find out?” They aren’t holding hands anymore, but his knees are still bent. He’s forgotten this isn’t how he is. He’ll probably always be forgetting.

She puts her mouth by his ear. She sounds like Elmer Fudd when she says, “Wah wah wah wah wah.”

 

 

Both of them are sprawled out on the area rug Clint said came free with the rent, “on account of how the last guy living here kind of superglued it to the floor?” Steve’s ankle is crossed over Bucky’s and they’re both staring up at the ceiling. It’s the third time since Bucky knew he was Bucky again that they’ve tried to have sex and then rapidly aborted mission. 

That’s what Bucky’s said each time: “Abort mission,” and each time, Steve’s found himself a little relieved, and confused and guilty about the relief. But it’s nice, to have most of his clothes still on, and his ankle crossed over Bucky’s. Bucky says, “Speaking of abortion,” and Steve tilts his head to the side questioningly, squinting, knowing Bucky can sense the motion even if he can’t see it, looking straight above them. “Why do you keep getting texts from Twitter about women’s health care?”

“Buck, I asked you not to go through my phone.”

“It’s not going through if the notification pops up on the screen while you’re in the bathroom.”

“It a little bit is. I mean, I’m not taking a phone into the bathroom, so I’ve gotta leave it.”

“Everybody except you takes their phone in the bathroom with them.”

“It’s got a  _ camera _ .”

“Get a phone with no camera. That’s what I’ve got.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Don’t go through my phone.” 

Bucky salutes him. Well, technically he salutes the ceiling. “Why do you keep getting texts from Twitter about women’s health care?”

“I get a lot of texts from Twitter. I’m a multifaceted guy.”

“You get those and descriptions of what Sam’s wearing.”  

“They’re called outfits of the day.”

“Huh,” Bucky says. “I kinda like that.”

Steve slides his leg up so their calves are crossed instead of their ankles. “In D.C.” He can feel Bucky tensing. “No, not that  _ in D.C.  _ Just. When I lived in D.C. I used to go to this coffee house across from a Planned Parenthood.” He doesn’t say that he started going to the coffee house  _ because _ it was across from the Planned Parenthood. No one needs to know that. “So I like to keep up-to-date.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Bucky rolls over to look into his eyes. “You  _ went  _ to this coffee house? Like you were a regular? ‘Cause you’ve never been a regular anywhere but a tube of analgesic.”

Steve huffs. “I’m very social. I’m very active.” 

“Prove it, then,” Bucky says, and tucks his face into Steve’s neck and kisses him there, one, two, three times, before pulling all the way away and smiling at him sadly.

 

 

Steve starts drawing up plans, whenever it occurs to him and Bucky is asleep, to take Bucky to D.C. It seems like a tricky thing, and he had thought Bucky was just bullshitting at first, but he’s brought it up a few more times since then: “So when am I gonna see this coffee house you were such a famed regular at?” 

A lot of the plans are just drawings of him and Bucky on a motorcycle together (would Bucky want to take the motorcycle? Maybe he would want to rent a car or take bicycles), but some of them are lists of contenders for motels and hotels (Steve would love to try an Airbnb in theory, but it seems like sometimes the homeowners hang around while you’re there, which is unappealing on several different levels). Most of them--and these he carries folded up in his wallet with him--are lists of ways Bucky being back in D.C. could go wrong.  

The two main issues, that he writes and scratches out and rewrites and so on:

  1. Hydra might still be looking for Bucky there. After, Steve learned how Pierce had set everyone at SHIELD to combing all camera feeds and social networks for Captain America’s face, and since then, he’s been terrified that they might do the same thing with Bucky. It doesn’t make sense, he knows, to worry about it more in this context; they could use the same methods to find Bucky in Brooklyn, if Bucky ever started going outside except to get cigarettes from the bodega, and no one has any reason to think the Winter Soldier stuck around the last place he was seen. Still, Steve finds himself grinding his teeth when he considers the possibility, so it goes on the list, and it goes on the list, and it goes on the list.  
  

  2. Being back there might bring up hard memories for Bucky. It might _trigger_ him, is what Steve’s read it’s called. It might make _him_ afraid that Hydra is going to come find him. Steve knows that Bucky’s the one pushing to go, but you don’t always know what’s good for you ahead of time.



So Steve keeps putting off the trip.

 

  
Bucky’s tomato plant begins to get heavy with fruit. He keeps it on an end table he moved from his bedroom to by the living room window, along with a glass he uses for the watering. More and more, Steve gets home from running errands to find Bucky asleep not in the bathtub or on the couch or in either of their beds, but on the floor, wrapped around the table, sharing a patch of sun with his plant.  

Bucky yawns and sits up when Steve closes the door behind him. He says, “Mornin’,” and Steve’s long stopped correcting him.

“Morning to you too.” He puts the bag of cereal boxes he’s carrying on the couch and crosses over to Bucky and sits down next to him. Sunlight brushes up against his shoulder, but he’s content to sit most of the way in the shade and look at Bucky, spotlit. He toussels Bucky’s hair and Bucky puts his left hand over Steve’s heart. It’s hot through the thin cotton of Steve’s t-shirt. Steve wills Bucky to never pull it away.

He asks, "Did you eat those pancakes I got you?" If he’s started stopping by the IHOP by himself to pick up food for Bucky, Sam never has to know about it. Bucky still looks so gaunt always.

The heat of the hand disappears, and Bucky uses his other hand to playfully shove Steve’s head away. "Yeah, I ate the pancakes. I  _ always  _ eat the pancakes. You fattening me up for slaughter, Cap'n Grouch?"

"I think you mean Cap'n Crunch."

"I’ve got brain damage.”

Steve snorts, but feels the need to clarify, “I'm not slaughtering you, Bucky, Jesus."

"Uh-huh."

"Just doing what I can to keep my best guy satisfied. He's kind of a finicky asshole."

"Oh yeah, that's me, Mr. Finicky, with my plain stack of chain restaurant flapjacks that I  _ never asked for. _ "

“Oh, okay. I’ll get you the blueberry lemonade pancakes next time. Thanks for letting me know.” 

Bucky grumbles, “The shit I put up with.” When he stands, he jostles the table, and he flings his arms out to grab the plant and the glass and hold them steady. He looks at them quietly for long after there’s any danger of anything falling.  

  
  


A few hours later, they’re next to each other on the couch, listening to the same record Bucky’s been listening to all the time lately. Bucky is making tally marks in a notebook; Steve doesn’t think they correspond to anything. He erases a smudge on his sketch of him and Bucky riding a tandem bike, and Bucky jerks his head up from his tallying like he’s just had a revelation. Steve throws an arm over the sketch, even though Bucky could have looked at it at any time.

But Bucky just says, “The future is fucking bananas. What kind of shitty pirate shills cereal?"

“What?”

“Cap’n Grouch.”

“Crunch.”

“What kind of shitty pirate shills cereal?”  

“Well, to be fair, what kind of shitty sailor shills spinach?”

“Hey, Popeye was legit. Got you to grow big and strong, didn’t he?”

“No one ever bought that story and you know it.”

“Nah, there was this one kid I told. In France. But he hadn’t slept right in a long time, had just come out of a firefight and, you know. When you’re fucked up like that. It’s nice to believe in some stupid magic spinach.” He rips off a fingernail with his teeth and spits it on the floor. “So I guess it doesn’t count.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, eyes zeroed on where the fingernail landed.

Bucky leans forward to smack a kiss to Steve's forehead. Rolls his eyes. "I’m taking a power nap, sailor."

He tucks his tally notebook down the front of his pants. He's out cold in his own bed for the next ten hours.

  
  


It’s almost midnight when Bucky wanders into the kitchen and finds Steve there, drinking coffee and reading a book of poems Natasha gave him. 

_ Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for what is not the electrified grid _ , Steve reads, and his stomach feels thick and hot and oversized, which is probably because of one mug of coffee too many. _ Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for dragging. She may also develop deep feelings of attachment for science, laboratories _ \--

“Mornin’,” Bucky says, and Steve closes the book.

“You want coffee?”

Bucky waves a hand at him. For whatever reason, Bucky doesn’t like the Keurig, but whenever Steve suggests getting him a drip coffee maker or even, for god’s sake, a percolator, Bucky says, “I’m doing all right, Steve,” like that’s a response.

Bucky blinks at him across the table like he would at a cat to show he meant no harm. He pulls his notebook back out of his pants and starts carefully tallying again. Steve watches him, and drinks his coffee, and thinks about how nauseous the coffee is making him. He watches the digital clock on the counter tick over to midnight and he clears his throat. Bucky looks up.  

Steve says, “I know that it’s normal, after everything you’ve been through, but, Buck, I’m worried about how much you’ve been sleeping.”

Bucky frowns at him and scrunches up his eyebrows. “I don’t sleep that often.”

“What?”

“I sleep a normal amount. I’m worried about how little  _ you  _ sleep.”

“Buck, you sleep fifteen, sixteen hours a day. You’re like a cat.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes, you--Bucky, you know I can see you, right? Even when you’re asleep. I can see you sleeping. I know Hydra didn’t burn object permanence out of your brain.” He  _ thinks.  _

“You’ve got it wrong.”

Steve clutches his mug of coffee closer to his chest. Close to the body, like he can absorb it by osmosis. All these years, he still hates to be alone in this body. One small person knocking around a whole mansion.  

He tries to joke, “I don’t want to say your sense of humor got a little off-kilter from living among Soviet militants so many years, because you were never all that funny, but Bucky, that isn’t funny.”

It’s hard enough most days believing Bucky is even really there, that Steve hasn’t just finally cracked, beyond sternum and ribs and the cartilage in his nose and every doorframe he touched when this body was new, cracked this new world wide open and crawled right out of it, taking the safest corner of his mind along and then blowing it up like a life raft. Something to float on: Bucky’s quiet heartbeat, which had always stunned Steve with its regularity, when Steve was convinced he could hear his own arrhythmia pounding away everywhere that he went. A simmering presence beneath traffic and big band and voices shouting at each other in overlapping languages, it  _ pound pound p o u n d e d _ , counting down to the day he would die with nothing at all to show for it.

It’s hard enough staying grounded in reality without Bucky convincing him he can’t even tell a sleeping person from an awake one.

“It’s not supposed to be funny, sweetheart. I don’t sleep too much. Are you talking about when I lie real still with my eyes shut? Because that ain’t sleep.”

“It’s okay to sleep, Bucky. I said I’m worried, but I’m not mad. You don’t gotta lie about it.”

“No, I’m really not asleep. I’m just practicing playing possum. It’s a good survival skill, and I never got to practice it with Hydra because they kept forcing me back into cryo the moment I got some downtime. No appreciation for my keen academic interest at all.”

“It’s a good survival skill.” Saying it makes him feel like an echo. Not of Bucky just now, but still of Bucky. Steve had always shook his head violently when Bucky said that to him-- _ Even dogs can play dead, Steve _ \--and drawn his shoulders up around his ears, and tried not to think about how, when it came down to it, even his best friend thought he was useless. 

“So’s kicking in a guy’s teeth,” Steve says, “but you haven’t been practicing that.”

Bucky looks thoughtful. “Yeah, you always were better at that than me. I can’t believe they stuck Jack McGuff’s teeth in that museum exhibit and called them  _ Captain America’s baby teeth. _ ”

When Steve saw that, he had laughed for the first time in—? “Yeah, I don’t know what the hell kind of big-mouthed baby they thought I must have been.”

“I mean, you  _ were  _ a big-mouthed baby. You still are. But those were some obvious fucking trophy teeth. Those were obviously kicked the hell out of some asshole’s mouth.”

“Doesn’t so much paint the image they were shooting for.”

Bucky’s lips twitch like he’s holding something in. The strength of his private joke forces his mouth into a little perfect upside-down  _ u _ before he gives in. “Those historians  _ defanged  _ you.”

Steve makes an ugly giggle-guffaw noise.  “Fuckin’--That’s awful. Shut up and go be a possum again.”

At the time, Bucky said it was morbid, Steve clutching those teeth in his fist when Bucky found him laid out in the parking lot. “That’s morbid and weird Steve,” he said when Steve carried them back to their boarding house room and stuck them in an old pickle jar.

Steve said, “Don’t be stupid. It can’t be morbid if he’s still alive.”

 

 

It’s three a.m. and Bucky is sprawled in his own bed, on top of the covers but using a pile of laundry like a makeshift blanket. Steve gets on the other side of the bed and knee-walks up to Bucky’s side.

“Bucky. Bucky. Buck. Sergeant Barnes.” Nothing. “James Buchanan Barnes,” he says in a high and nasal imitation of Bucky’s mother. Bucky still doesn’t do any of the normal sleep things he used to do, like grunt, or stick his head all the way under the pillow if anyone made the slightest noise, or curl up in the fetal position out of a habit they share of doing anything they can for a little extra warmth even now that their bodies are enormous furnaces instead of prepubescent bags of bone. “Are you really playacting right now?” 

He experimentally nudges Bucky in the shoulder with his elbow. “Buck, I slipped when I was chopping onions and I cut my palm open. I didn’t know a palm could bleed that bad, and you would think the serum would make me clot faster than this but with this kind of gushing, our safety deposit, I mean--”

It’s enough. Bucky pushes up on his arms and stretches like he took to heart what Steve said about him being like a cat. With his eyes still closed, he asks, “Does it need stitches?”

“No, just a Band-Aid should do it.”

“Do I look like a Band-Aid.”

“Not as much as you used to. Your hair’s a hell of a lot less sticky without the brylcreem.”

Bucky opens his eyes and twists around, clearly ready to defend his brylcreem the same as if it’s 1939. But he pauses because, “You're not bleeding.”

“Only from my heart.”

“Were you really chopping onions?”

“Were you really asleep?

“Look at Captain fucking America, everybody. Can learn to use the internet to search for celebrities’ cocks but can’t learn to let a single thing go.”

Steve hides his face in the crook of his arm. “Not a bad tabloid headline. You should start writing again.” 

“Right. Get a little desk and some spending money. Maybe I won’t even freelance. I can sit in a bull pen.”

“You could.”

“I fucking. Steve. I water my tomato plant every day. I eat the pancakes. I do people things already, okay? You like when I pretend that way. Just please let me pretend the way  _ I  _ like the rest of the time.” He lies back down. “And  _ I  _ like pretending to be asleep.”

Steve worries at his lower lip with an incisor. “You don’t have to say  _ please. _ ”

“Apologies for my good manners.”

Steve nudges Bucky onto his side and gets hissed at for his troubles, but he glues himself to Bucky’s back anyway, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s chest and holding on.

  
  
  


“Abort mission,” Bucky says, and as soon as Steve’s hands are off of him, he carefully crawls from on top of Steve and flips himself onto his back on Steve’s bed. 

Steve pulls his shirt back down. It feels too small all of a sudden. “Did I do anything?” 

Bucky shakes his head. “Did you even have time to do anything?” 

“Right.” Steve pinches the skin between his own fingers, less hard than as hard as he can but  _ hard _ , trying to feel present in his own body again.

Bucky says, “Hey, remember how in the movies people always smoked after fucking? Do they still do that?”

“I don’t think so. I think now they just fuck more after they fuck.”

“Figures. Capitalist decadence. Anyway, I’m out of cigarettes. You can come buy them with me. Then we can lie here and smoke them together and it’ll be like we did something.”

“Well, we did do  _ something _ . It’s not like there’s a minimum length requirement.”  

“Steve. Buy me cigarettes.” 

“Yeah, yeah, fine. Have you seen my shoes?” 

It’s Steve’s first time seeing Bucky in the bodega. He looks unexpectedly seamless in the crowded mess of it, small and tired, but at ease. He knows, without seeming to think about it, how and where to stand so that his face doesn’t show up on the security camera. Steve decides to throw in a couple of Hershey bars for them to have with the cigarettes. He steps up to the counter as Bucky’s saying, “Yeah, those ones,” to the cashier, and he lays his hand on Bucky’s metal bicep, squeezing comfortingly like it’s the flesh one, and leans across to put the chocolate down. 

Bucky yanks his arm from Steve’s grip and sidesteps, putting a foot of space between them.

The cashier eyes them. “Together?” 

Steve says, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m getting his stuff.” By the door, Bucky crosses his arms and folds his lips inside his mouth.

At home, Steve puts the cigarettes and chocolate on the dining table and puts the plastic bag in the basket where they keep them all. Bucky steps up behind him as he’s doing that and Steve turns around. They didn’t talk on the walk back.

Now, Bucky says, “Please don’t touch it.”

Unbidden, Steve’s eyes slide down to Bucky’s crotch, the soft charcoal button fly of his slacks. 

“You don’t want to--anymore?” 

Bucky flicks him on the cheekbone and then Steve’s looking into Bucky’s eyes again, with their dozy big pupils and fine lines feathering from the corners. Smile lines, you’d think if you didn’t share a home with him. 

“Tell your mind the gutter’s temporarily closed for maintenance,” Bucky says. “Come on. The  _ arm _ .” His voice goes softer, needier. “Please don’t touch it. At least. Not today, I guess.” 

Steve nods. “Okay, Buck. I won’t.”

“Sorry I pulled away.”

“Hey, no apologizing, okay? Not ever.”

“Really? Not ever? What if I set your kitchen on fire?”

“ _ Our  _ kitchen.”

“What if I set your hair on fire?”

“ _ Our  _ hair,” Steve says, just to be difficult, and to get Bucky to reach out with his right hand and tug a little where Steve’s hair is spiky at the top. He does, corner of his mouth turned up only the slightest bit. Steve thinks,  _ Please. Please one day let there be smile lines.  _ A subway map of tangling furrows, sleep and age and happiness. If Steve is just difficult often enough. If he doesn’t touch the arm and he brings home enough pancakes. 

Bucky says, “Well, if it’s  _ our  _ hair, I guess I won’t have to be sorry. Good point.” 

They smoke in bed. Steve says, “Huh. This  _ is  _ like we did something.” 

Bucky says, “Isn’t it? Brainwashing’s good for some things.” 

 

  
It’s when Bucky comes up behind Steve drawing another picture at the dining table of the two of them on a motorcycle and says, “Hmm. We look good like that. Well, you do,” that Steve decides it’s time to stop putting things off. 

He turns on the shower and sits on the floor, looking at the list from his wallet of possible complications of going to D.C. He rips each item off one by one and rolls them up small and puts them in his mouth and swallows them down. Until there’s nothing. Nothing to worry about. He can protect Bucky from Hydra, and he can calm Bucky down if he gets freaked out, and he can buy a portable phone charger in case they want to spend the whole day outside. And baseball caps to keep the sun out of their eyes. Everything’s solved. 

  
  


On the back of Steve’s motorcycle, Bucky plays possum, locking his metal arm in place around Steve’s stomach and sometimes disrupting the unsettling realism of the act by making soft ha-shew haw-shew snoring noises in Steve’s ear and then giggling when Steve complains. They take no breaks; they ride straight there.  

  
  


They’ve barely been in the hotel room any time at all when Bucky says, “So, show me this coffee house. Is your photo on the wall and all, bigshot?” 

“No. The employees didn’t know who I was.” 

“Oh. That’s convenient.” Bucky goes in the bathroom and puts all the free toiletries in his pockets.   
  
  


 

There’s no one outside the Planned Parenthood, but Jadey is working the counter in the coffee house. As they approach, she looks at him in the way people do when they know they’ve seen you before but wish they hadn’t so they didn’t have to think about it. She smiles at Bucky, even as Steve is ordering first to give Bucky time to adjust. Thinking fondly of the taste of bile, he orders the pumpkin spice latte. 

Bucky looks over Steve’s shoulder. He stands on tip-toes as though he isn’t perfectly tall enough to see. He points at Jadey’s arm, at her tattoo. Says, “Hey, that looks real nice.” 

“Oh, um, thank you. It’s in honor of my pop-pop. I wish I’d gotten it somewhere less visible, though.”   

Bucky says, “Tell me about it. But no, it’s great, honest.” He’s quiet, and Steve turns his head to look at him. He’s chewing on the inside of his cheek. Finally, he says, “Mind if I scandalize you for a second? Just my torso, I swear.” He holds his hand up in a scout’s honor oath.

Jadey stares at his abs, his gloved hands, arches an eyebrow. “If it’s just your torso.” She looks suddenly embarrassed. Steve can sympathize. 

Bucky gives her a soft smile and hikes his sweater up to his ribs, twisting so she can clearly see the shield tattooed there. It’s smaller than hers, and without color, and Steve’s own ribs ache to know that he didn't know it existed. To not have known Bucky even  _ could _ leave the apartment long enough to do something like that.

Bucky lets his sweater drop back down. “Brand new. Yours is nicer.” He drops a twenty in the tip jar. Handwritten and scotch-taped, the label reads, “for college :).” His gloved metal fingers twitch at his sweater’s fraying hem. That’s a secret Steve does know. That hand’s implacable sureness. How it gets flesh-warm when Bucky naps in the sunlight. 

Bucky says, “And could I trouble you for a large Americano? Do you top that with whipped cream?”

Jadey says, “For you, we do,” and rings him up. “So you're some kinda superhero fanboy or something? No offense.”

“Naw. That superhero racket’s overblown, don'tcha think? All those tee-shirts and toys and shit. A consumerist nightmare.” 

Jadey says, “Totally egregious.”

“It’s comforting, though. A shield. Over-literal, I know.” He shrugs. He pays. His wink is halfhearted. When they left the hotel, there was a brightness about him, a buoyancy in his shoulders and hips, that seems to leave him all at once. Steve imagines him as a Macy’s Parade balloon, pricked with a pin, his air gone in a wild whoosh. He touches the small of Bucky’s back. Too fast for anyone to photograph. He makes sure.

Sequestered by the bathrooms in cushy red armchairs and clutching their mugs, they stare at each other. Heavy in the eyes, both of them. Steve says, “You're not a fanboy?”

“Oh, shut up. You don't even know that word.  _ I _ don’t even know that word.”

“Not even a little bit a fanboy?”

“Fuck that idol bullshit.” Leslie Howard’s chin. James Cagney’s smooth body language. The pin-curled pin-ups Bucky hung around his bed purely, Steve knew, for appearance’s sake. Bucky kicks at Steve’s calf. “I gotta thing for the costume, though.”

“Really? I hadn’t the faintest.” No inkling.  _ Nice ink _ . The tattoo would have been red at first. Raw and new. Would have been hidden beneath a clean white bandage. Steve swallows, picturing peeling the bandage away. 

  
  
  


Steve has a panic attack in the middle of a D.C. crosswalk. That’s what Bucky tells him, later, when he’s got them both bundled into a pay-by-the hour motel and he and Steve are sitting on the bed side-by-side, holding hands. 

“I did not,” Steve says, sounding so defensive he cringes at himself. 

“Oh, so how’d we get here?”   


“We walked.” 

“Which direction?”

“In the direction of the motel, idiot.” 

“Uh-huh. You were talking and then you just kind of faded out mid-sentence. Your pulse was double the usual.” 

“Caffeine’ll do that.”

“Wow. Maybe you should start getting tweets about your own health.”

“There, uh, actually are Twitters about my health.”

“Oh.” Bucky frowns. “That’s disgusting.”

“I thought so too.” They sit in silence except for the air conditioner shoved precariously into the window and producing only warm air. 

“You were gone behind the eyes, Steve,” Bucky says. “That happen a lot?”

“It doesn’t.” Bucky looks at him. “Really, it doesn’t.” Steve wasn’t actually gone. He does remember forgetting how to breathe, and everything feeling slower than normal, and Bucky yanking him out of traffic, and the heavy clumsiness of his own body. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t so bad. At least he’d stopped thinking. 

Bucky presses his face against Steve’s shoulder, and Steve realizes so suddenly he flinches.

“Peggy. While we’re here. I should see Peggy.” 

Bucky’s face is still hidden, but he tenses. “I.” 

“You don’t have to.” Steve makes his voice quiet. “I can go by myself, not that long, if you’ll be okay here.” 

Bucky looks up at him. “Will  _ you  _ be okay?” 

“Of course I’ll be okay. I’m Captain America. I’m always okay.” Bucky just glares at him. “Look, fine, if I start to feel weird at all, even if I think it’s heartburn, I’ll call you. Okay?” 

Still looking grim, Bucky nods. 

Steve makes it about a block. He can’t stop picturing Hydra operatives breaking into the motel room where, for all he knows, Bucky’s fallen asleep for real. They payed with cash, anonymous, but it isn’t like the place has any security. Bucky is strong, but it isn’t like that always means anything. Steve sits down on the curb and bites into the meat of his own forearm, his breathing shallow. 

He goes back and stakes out the room until he thinks he’s been gone a realistic amount of time for visiting Peggy. He smiles at Bucky and tells him, “She said to send you her love,” and something in him hurts, and Bucky looks dubious. 

  
  


Sam comes to the city for a weekend, and as always, Steve feels like he can breathe a little easier when he sees him--his shoulders straight but relaxed, his denim jacket buttoned all the way up. Every neat, real detail of him. Always how Steve remembers.

They go see a cartoon about magical raccoons battling the construction of a suburban development. There’s a lot more about testicles in it than Steve expected. Sam sits with his legs kicked up on the empty row of seats in front of them, crossed at the ankles. He eats most of Steve’s popcorn. The movie ends with one of the racoons pleading with the audience to not destroy animal habitats.  

Sam leans over and whispers to Steve, “So how’d they get you to appear in this movie when you were still in the ice?”

Steve shushes him, but then says, “I am  _ not  _ a cartoon racoon.” Not that Steve supports suburban developments, of course not. He isn’t a monster. 

Sam looks him up and down and does a shrugging thing with his mouth and eyebrows. “I call it like I see it.” 

They walk around after, aimless and slow. Manhattan’s lit as duskily as it ever gets, and it’s cool, and pleasantly loud. Sam keeps smiling at Steve sidelong, probably happy to just see Steve not obsessing over pancakes, but it still clutches at Steve’s heart when he does it. He really is beautiful. He has great teeth.  

Steve sharply turns forty-five degrees and herds Sam off the center of the sidewalk and into a parked car. He smirks. “The sidewalk’s over there, Sam.”

Sam, his back against the car, says, “Really? Man, you do need to get out more.” Steve knows Sam has more than enough situational awareness to have not let him do that, but Sam always lets him have the irritated reactions he’s looking for from his jokes. It’s sweet. 

Sam’s sweet. Steve, telegraphing the move, kisses him, one hand leaving a smear on the car’s paintjob. It’s a goddamn Porsche. 

Sam’s jaw works, kissing him back for a second, as Steve licks around his lips, and then he pulls away. “Steve,” he says, and puts his hands on Steve’s chest and nudges him backward. 

“Sorry, I’m--” 

“It’s fine, but we’re not doing this.” 

“I know. You deserve--” 

“Okay, come on. No shit about what I deserve. That isn’t really the point.” He holds eye contact with Steve. Steve flicks his gaze down to Sam’s hands, which are slowly flexing open and closed. He looks back up. Jesus, he got saliva all over Sam’s chin. 

Does Steve  _ have  _ to be this stupid and needy all of the time? 

“Well, it’s not like  _ I  _ deserve--”

“Seriously, none of that shit. I told you.”  

“I’ve got enough of a complex relationship,” Steve parrots. “I guess. I maybe do.” 

Sam sighs. He says, “In fact, I’ve been seeing someone myself. A little bit. But could be something.”

Steve asks, “Anyone I know?”

“Nope.”

“That’s good. No one I know is much better at this.”

“Kissing, or talking about it?” Sam’s smiling, and it doesn’t look forced; his mouth is loose and lopsided, but he sounds strained. A little bit. But it could be something.

“Uh, emotional shit, I mean.” Grabbing at the back of his own hair, Steve adds, “Everyone I know is  _ much  _ better at kissing than me.”

“Steve. Man. Can I give you a hug?” Strained voice. Soft eyes. Uncalloused thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans. 

Steve wants. When he inhales, his lungs feel oversized. It isn’t safe, all that space like an unfurnished basement. Anything could be rattling around in there.

“You know you already always hug me when we part ways.”

“Didn’t ask ‘cause I’m leaving.” 

Steve says, “Well.” Stiff and awkward, he spreads his arms. Sam steps in and wraps his own arms around him, holding Steve’s chest together. Steve closes his eyes. For now, Sam will hold his chest together for him. A weight lifting. He breathes out, quick and hot on Sam’s neck. 

When they pull apart, some kid’s got a camera phone trained on them from a few feet away. Sam just goes over calm as ever and plucks the phone from her hand.

“What, were you gonna sell this to TMZ? Captain America’s Interracial Sex Scandal? You gotta admit, it’s not that catchy.”

She says, “Wait, shit, you’re the Falcon,” her hand hanging in the air between them like she forgot what she was reaching for. She can’t be more than sixteen.

“Of course I am. You think Captain America hugs just anyone? That’s some high security clearance shit.” Sam taps at her phone. Uncalloused thumbs. “It’s deleted. You ask before you take pictures of people. Privacy is a virtue.” He offers her back the phone, and she takes it and stares at it. 

Squinting, she asks, “If I get your fingerprints off this, can I sell  _ those  _ to TMZ?” 

Sam takes the phone back and wipes the screen clean with a corner of his t-shirt.

“‘Privacy is a virtue’?” Steve mocks when they fall back in step with one another. “You’re starting to sound like me.” 

Sam laughs at him. Knocks their shoulders together. “No way. It was something Natasha said. Turns out she doesn’t approve of my Twitter.” 

Steve clutches his chest. “You saying there’s something wrong with starting to sound like me?”

“Look, I’ll have you know I worked hard to cultivate my own motivational speaking style, and I’m not giving that up, not even to imitate my hero.” 

Steve hmms. He feels flushed. “Bucky says to fuck ‘that idol bullshit.’” 

“I said hero, not idol. Not Captain American Idol. Not any of that.”

“It’s true I can’t sing worth anything. Bucky says I sound like a garbage disposal.”

Sam laughs at him again. It’s good. It holds Steve’s chest together. 

Steve says, “I should never have told him what a garbage disposal  _ was. _ ” 

  
  
  


It’s three in the morning and Steve is sitting in his bed next to a maybe-sleeping Bucky. He’s cross-legged, with  _ Thus Spake Zarathustra  _ open on one knee. He took it out from the library this time, unlike when he was twelve and ripped a few pages out of the library copy and stuffed them in his pockets because he owed the library too many fines.

Softly, he reads, “I love him who loves his virtue, for virtue is the will to go under and an arrow of longing. I love him who does not hold back one drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides over the bridge as spirit. I love him who makes his virtue his addiction and his catastrophe: for his virtue’s sake he wants to live on and to live no longer. I love him who--” Steve pauses. He clears his throat.

Bucky opens his eyes. He says, “No.” He sounds angry in the low, slow way he used to. 

“No?”

“No addiction. No catastrophe. And no  _ philosophy _ , for fuck’s sake. You ever read anything in your life that wasn’t a downer?” 

Steve splays the book facedown across his thigh and rubs a bit of Bucky’s hair between forefinger and thumb. “What would be the fun in that?” 

Bucky nuzzles closer to his hand. “Jesus. ‘I love him who does not hold back one drop of spirit for himself.’”

“Do you?

“Fucking unfortunately.” He tilts his head back and bites the pad of Steve’s thumb. “There are some comic books. In my bedroom. Graphic novels, whatever.” 

“That’s real interesting, Buck. You should post that on Facebook.” 

Bucky makes a show of hiding his face in his hands. “You’ll like the art, okay? Some of them are even in  _ black and white  _ so you don’t have to have too much fun.”  

“Hey, black and white is fun! Remember how everyone went on and on about what a life-changing experience  _ The Wizard of Oz  _ was? It always struck me as a bit played up.” 

“If by ‘everyone’ you mean ‘me,’ ‘cause I don’t know who the hell else you would have been talking to. The milkman?”

Steve hits him on the shoulder (right shoulder) with the book. “We didn’t have a milkman. You think we had a milkman? Tell me more about this. Did I have solid gold teeth and a savings account?” 

“Eh, what do I know.” Delicately, Bucky takes the book from his hand, dog-ears the page, and tucks it under his pillow. “You can have that back when you aren’t tempted to read it aloud to me anymore.”

Steve says, “Fair enough,” and trails a finger down the back of Bucky’s neck. He makes his eyes as serious as he knows how, which he’s been told by Natasha is much more serious than anyone has ever needed to make their eyes. He says, “I love him who does not want to have too many virtues.”

Bucky says, “I never understood your pillowtalk.” 

 

 

Bucky is watering his tomato plant. He’s methodical about it, circling around the thing with small steps and pouring a small glug of water in each time he moves. Natasha came over to water it while they were out of town, and she texted Steve a photo of the multiple diagrams Bucky had left for her explaining the right approach. 

Steve tells him, “I kissed Sam.”

Bucky says, “Right. Yeah,” without looking up.

“‘Right, yeah?’”

“Yeah. Were you not already kissing Sam?”

“What? No, of course not. You thought I was kissing Sam?”

Bucky finishes and sets the glass down. He goes to get a towel to dry it off with. “Well, sure. I mean, it’s fine. Who am I to ask that you not kiss Sam?” 

“You’re Bucky.” 

“Oh, right. I forgot.” 

Steve would normally think that was funny, but he’s too thrown for a loop to laugh right now. Has Bucky thought all this time that the pancakes are some kind of apology for making out with Sam? “Do you think I’ve been having an affair with Natasha too?”

“Steve,” Bucky says. “Come on.” 

“What? She did kiss me once. Strategically.” 

“Oh, strategically.” Bucky snorts. “Look, really, who am I to ask? It’s not like I can even have sex.” The way he moves the towel inside the glass is as methodical as his watering strategy. 

He’s chosen an inconvenient time to do something Steve finds so erotic, but Steve does his best to sound earnest when he says, “So? I can’t either.” He does  _ mean  _ it earnestly. He can’t. 

“Sure, because I can’t, and I’m apparently the only one you’re trying to make time with. Or was.” 

“You still are. Sam told me I shouldn’t have kissed him. He was right. I’m sorry.” 

“Why can you apologize and I can’t?” 

“It’s part of my duty to the American public.”  

“ _ Our  _ duty,” Bucky corrects. “Am _ our _ ican.” 

“Hilarious.” He rubs a hand over his face. “No, but, Bucky. Every time you’ve aborted mission--If you hadn’t, I would have not much later.” 

Bucky studies him for a while. Steve lets Bucky see him squirm. This is supposed to be about being vulnerable, maybe. “No you wouldn’t have, asshole. You would have just kept going until you had another panic attack.”

“Be that as it  _ may _ .” Every time Bucky’s brought that up, Steve has insisted that it wasn’t a panic attack. He was tired. It was hot out. Maybe it was an inner ear thing. None of these times has Bucky been impressed. “I can’t either. I don’t know why.” 

“Kismet, probably.”   

“Some shitty kismet.” 

“What kismet isn’t? But live and livesmet.” 

Steve says, “Huh?” 

“It’s a pun.”

“No, it really isn’t.” Bucky frowns. “Please don’t blame it on your brain damage.” 

  
  


They’re awake at the same time and it’s morning. As far as Steve knows,  _ it’s morning  _ and they both just woke up from a real night’s sleep, as long as, on Steve’s part, four hours counts as a night. Steve feels fuzzy with it; this is why, he thinks, he doesn’t ever sleep that long. His body is soft and staticky and it’s hard to make himself want to get out of Bucky’s bed.

In front of him and damp from the shower, Bucky is dressing. Steve’s eyes linger on the tattoo, and how it shimmers like a mirage every time Bucky’s ribs shift with his movements or his breath. Bucky slips on a shirt and the mirage disappears. 

Steve tries to make an omelette. He cracks five eggs in a bowl and stares at them wiggling around. Bucky says, “Hey, when my tomatoes are ready, they’ll be great with eggs, right?” Yolk slimes its way down Steve’s fingers and he wipes it off on his jeans without thinking. 

“Steve? I didn’t make that up, right? Eggs and tomatoes are good together?”  

Steve looks up from the wiggling eggs. Bucky’s standing closer to him than he was before. Steve says, “You got my shield tattooed on you.”

Bucky cocks his head to the right. “Yeah, well. If we’re not fucking, it’s the next best thing, right?” 

“I don’t know. It might be better, honestly.” He starts to reach for Bucky’s ribs but stops himself, biting his lip. Is there still yolk on his hands? Bucky takes his faltering hand and places it there, over where it must be, and Steve imagines he can feel the dark lines through Bucky’s shirt. He says, “When’d you even do something like that?”

“I don’t exactly keep a hectic social calendar, you know.” 

“Yeah, but you don’t--” Steve tightens his grip on Bucky’s ribs.

“Go out? I go out, Steve. I do.” 

Steve’s brow furrows, but he says, “Right. You do person things. You pretend. I forgot.”

“Nah. Yeah, but nah. This wasn’t pretending.” Steve strokes a thumb along his side and Bucky shivers a little. “Actually, I did pretend to be asleep while the guy was doing it. I just thought, ‘This wasn’t pretending,’ sounded romantic.” 

“Oh, don’t worry about that. It did.”

“Thank god.” Bucky moves his hand to Steve’s waist, and they stand like there for some time, each looking at their own hands. 

Then Bucky starts tapping his fingers rhythmically against Steve’s waist. He has the same face on that he has when he makes his tally marks. He says, “Hey, what if we talked about how I’ve got your shield tattooed on me  _ while  _ we smoked in bed.” He looks up, grinning. “You could probably even touch the tattoo the whole time, but if not, that’s still pretty good, right?”

Steve says, “You’re a genius,” and kisses him. If he slobbers on Bucky’s chin, Bucky’s sweet enough not to mention it. Bucky’s sweet enough to make the omelette for him without Steve having to admit he can’t manage to do it himself.

 

 

He’s recovering from Natasha kicking him in the solar plexus when Natasha says, “I’d say you’re losing it, Steve, but I’m pretty sure you’d already lost it when I met you.” She doesn’t sound at all cruel, despite having just kicked him in the solar plexus. She gives him her hand and he pulls her to sit across from him in the ring, both of them with their legs pretzeled. He gets his breath back. As much as he ever has it. Her breath is deeper, slower. He focuses on that. 

 

On a bench on the High Line, Sam says, “You know, Steve, you could get some help,” and Steve says, “I’m trying to,” and doesn’t know what he means by that, and looks at the traffic instead of at Sam’s concerned eyes.

 

Clint calls him and says, “You know, I tried  _ really  _ building a birdhouse for the first time? It’s some good stuff. This just broke the whole game wide open,” and Steve says, “You’re calling me? We live in the same building.” 

 

Bucky says, “Jesus, I love this tomato plant,” and Steve’s heart hurts, but what else is new. 

  
  
  


He’s smoked his cigarette down to the filter, so he stubs it out on the thigh of his jeans and Bucky puts another one in his mouth and lights it for him. He’s taking his own slow. It’s not okay for Steve to touch the tattoo today, but Bucky touches it for him, tracing the circles. 

When Steve’s cigarette is lit, Bucky says, “So, in Ohio--”

“Ohio?” Steve barely avoids dropping the cigarette in shock. “You’re talking about  _ Ohio  _ when we’re having sex? What’d I do to you, Buck?”

“ _ In Ohio _ ,” Bucky persists, “I read that a lot of Planned Parenthoods are affiliated with, uh book clubs. Feminist book clubs.”

“Okay. That’s swell.”

“ _ In Ohio,”  _ Bucky repeats for no reason.

“Jesus.”

“I was just thinking. You could do that.”

“I could be in Ohio? This is some strong language you’re spouting.”

“You could do the book club. You could have a feminist book club. It could be depressing feminist literature even. That’s a thing, right?”

“I don’t think it would be very appropriate for me to found a feminist book club.”

Bucky sighs. Steve takes Bucky’s cigarette from him and switches it with his own.

“I’m only trying to appeal to your interests, Steve.”

“Yeah, well. I think if I shouldn’t be a clinic escort I shouldn’t be founding a feminist book club.”

“So a book club. Join a book club.”

“You’re harping on this a lot. What’s in it for you?”

Bucky takes a drag of his cigarette and blows the smoke in Steve’s face. “You are, idiot.”

 

  
Steve goes to the library. He watches the librarians at the desk over the tops of his aviators. He reads  _ Invisible Cities _ , which he googled on his phone and decided was not depressing.  _ The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it _ , he reads, and he thinks,  _ This is a lot less depressing than some other things, Bucky.  _ A librarian looks something up on the computer and he thinks, hysterically,  _ Does Ohio  _ have  _ any cities _ ? 

He doesn’t speak to a librarian today. He doesn’t ask about events or groups. It’s okay. He reads.  _ Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes-- _

 

  
He wakes up one morning, disoriented and tangled in the sheets, and he walks into the living room and Bucky is there, biting into one of his tomatoes, the juice getting all over his shirt and arms and chin. Bucky sees him and laughs and holds the tomato out. He says, “Taste this.” 

Steve does. It tastes bright, and solid, and it’s full of pulp, and the juice gets all over his face too. He says, “Jesus, Bucky. You grew this. You grew this whole thing.”

Bucky says, “That’s right. I grew this whole entire single tomato.” Steve spits pulp onto his shirt, right at the hole in the “A” in “HAWKEYE,” and Bucky squawks.

“This  _ entire tomato, _ ” Steve says, and he feels dizzy, and clenches his arm around Bucky’s right shoulder, pulling him into his body. “You built this whole tomatohouse.”

Bucky says, “Please don’t say that’s a pun somehow.”

“Excuse you,” Steve says. “I have unspecified brain problems.”

Bucky says, “Well, look at that,” and grins at him, and takes another bite of tomato.  

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> the one graphic depiction of violence is brief but still potentially disturbing. committed by steve against an A.I.M. member.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] he's alive! i'm alive! we're all alive! (oh, this case just got busted wide open)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214286) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




End file.
